Hoi An

Bleary eyed and feeling a little sleep deprived we jumped off the night bus at 6am in the town of Danang before firstly getting on a wrong local bus, then the correct one heading for the small old town of Hoi An. This picturesque little town is like stepping back in time and has a definite Chinese feel to it – small lanes with street sellers everywhere, markets selling weird and wonderful things, temples and people to watch by the bus load… it is also the place to come in Vietnam for some personal tailoring – just give them a few hours and one of the many shops in town can knock you up anything you want – suits, dresses, shoes, shirts etc just find the picture in a magazine (of which they have a lot on offer to look through) and they will create you a replica Armani suit before you can say ‘does my bum look big in this’!! The need for a suit hasn’t arisen as yet on our travels but the others having a wedding later in the year took the opportunity to get measured up – very dapper and glam they looked too in their finished garments. Inbetween fittings and tape measures in personal places we went out exploring the streets and took in some of the local culture by ways of a small temple, folk show and a look round a traditional house. Later that day we took a relaxing small boat ride down the river, this nearly ended in a small disaster as the driver managed to hit a submerge tree stump perfectly square on – the boat slowly moved higher out of the water balancing precariously before it started to tilt heavily to one side! After a few very slow seconds of us all looking at each other as if to say ‘we are going to get wet’ it lurched one last time before our driver managed to somehow slide us off of the stump – I was just getting ready to save my camera… sorry, save Shona. Time for a much needed beer to calm the nerves after our brush with disaster and at just under 15p a glass the local brew went down very well. The following day we took mopeds out for a long ride along China Beach, famous for being the landing ground of American soliders during the Vietnam war and then their playground inbetween bombing missions!! We also stopped off at the marble mountains to visit a temple. We parked our bikes with a nice lady who said she’d look after them for us if we looked around her shop after we’d been to the temple – she sold 8 foot high marble statues of elephants and buddha’s… so watch out as you never know what might turn up in the post!!